Different people have different kinds of "dead soldiers":
Apparently
spiritualmonkey has been snickering at me (
sotto voce, obviously) for saving all these empty lotion bottles, thinking that the Yankee family values were manifesting irrationally. Next thing you know I'll be saving bits of string and scraps of used aluminum foil, right?
Well. Take the above-shown six empty lotion bottles, add a utility knife and a rubber (actually silicone) scraper from the kitchen, and you get this:
That's 12 ounces (by weight) of lotion, from six supposedly "empty" lotion bottles. At 65 cents an ounce, that comes to $7.80 worth of lotion.
Laugh
while you can all you want, monkey-boy.
My grandmother often tells a story of my great aunt who used to save tea bags by hanging them out on a clothes line to dry so that they could be reused.
I have several 'almost' empty lotion bottles that i know now what to do with!
My family will be so proud.
;)
Edited at 2008-01-01 01:17 am (UTC)
I haven't bought wrapping paper in at least five years (and then only because it was way too cool looking). In my boxes are pieces of wrapping paper that were old before I was born. It does make unwrapping presents an insanely long activity, as you have to use a sharp knife to carefully remove the tape, making sure not to rip the paper...
I swear we're related somehow...
In the concrete... well, you remember my grandmother (Dad's mom), right? By the time Dad & his sibs had to clear out Grandma's house when she entered the Alzheimer's care facility, there were drawers in the kitchen that wouldn't close because they were so full of little crumpled bits of aluminum foil, and a couple hundred empty cottage cheese containers used for storing leftovers.
I hadn't read the book at the time, but looking back, her refrigerator reminds me of the description of dinner at Professor Vambrace's house in Tempest Tost (or was it Leaven of Malice?): lots of little dabs and scraps of depressingly stale and dried-out leftovers. Ugh.
RE: Your grandmother. Yeah, that doesn't sound good. I worry all the time that I'm going to end up like that. I have a hard time finding the line between "admirably conservation-minded" and "wacko."